Jo Nesbo - The Redeemer

'I hate it when you do this.'

'I only want you to be good.'

Halvorsen cast a glance at his older colleague to see if he was joking. They got out of the car.

'Aren't you going to lock up?' Harry asked.

'The lock froze last night. The key broke in it this morning. How long have you known who the guilty person is?'

'A while.'

They crossed the street.

'Knowing who is in most cases the easy bit. It's the obvious candidate. The husband. The best friend. The guy with a record. And never the butler. That's not the problem; the problem is proving what your head and your gut have been telling you for ages.' Harry pressed the bell beside 'Holmen'. 'And that's what we're going to do now. Find the little piece that changes apparently unconnected information into a perfect chain of evidence.'

A voice crackled 'Ja' over the speaker.

'Police here, Harry Hole. Can we…?'

The lock buzzed.

'It's all a question of moving fast,' Harry said. 'Most murder cases are solved in the first twenty-four hours or not at all.'

'Thanks. I've heard that one before,' Halvorsen said.

Birger Holmen stood waiting for them at the top of the stairs.

'Come in,' he said and led them into the living room. A bare Christmas tree stood by the door to the French balcony, waiting to be decorated.

'My wife is sleeping,' he said before Harry could ask.

'We'll whisper,' Harry said.

Birger Holmen gave a sad smile. 'She won't wake up.'

Halvorsen sent Harry a quick glance.

'Mm,' the inspector said. 'Taken a tranquilliser perhaps?'

Birger Holmen nodded. 'The funeral's tomorrow.'

'Yes, of course, that's a strain. Well, thank you for lending me this.' Harry put a photograph on the table. It was of Per Holmen sitting with his mother and father standing on either side. Protected. Or, depending on how you saw it, surrounded. A silence ensued as no one said a word. Birger Holmen scratched his forearm through his shirt. Halvorsen wriggled forward in his chair, then moved back.

'Do you know much about drug addiction, herr Holmen?' Harry asked without looking up.

Birger Holmen frowned. 'My wife has taken one sleeping pill. That doesn't mean-'

'I'm not talking about your wife. You may be able to save her. I'm talking about your son.'

'Depends what you mean by know. He was hooked on heroin. It made him unhappy.' He was going to say something else, but paused. He examined the picture on the table. 'It made us all unhappy.'

'I don't doubt that. But if you had known anything about drug addiction, you would have known that it takes precedence over everything else.'

Birger Holmen's voice at once trembled with indignation. 'Are you saying I don't know that, Inspector? Are you saying… my wife was

… he…' But tears had crept into his voice. '… his own mother…'

'I know,' Harry whispered. 'But drugs come before mothers. Before fathers. Before life.' Harry breathed in. 'And before death.'

'I'm exhausted, Inspector. What do you want?'

'Tests show there were no drugs in his blood when he died. So he was in a bad state. And when heroin addicts are like this, the need for redemption is so strong that you can threaten your own mother with a gun to get it. And redemption is not a shot in the head, but in the arm, the neck, the groin or any other place you can still find a fresh vein. Your son was found with his kit and a bag of heroin in his pocket, herr Holmen. He can't have shot himself. Drugs take precedence, as I said, over everything. Also-'

'Death.' Birger Holmen still had his head in his hands, but his voice was quite distinct. 'So you think my son was killed? Why?'

'I was hoping you could tell us.'

Birger Holmen did not answer.

'Was it because he threatened her?' Harry asked. 'Was it to give your wife peace of mind?'

Holmen raised his head. 'What are you talking about?'

'My guess is you hung around Plata waiting. And when he turned up, you followed him after he had bought his fix. You took him down to the container terminal, as he sometimes went there when he had nowhere else.'

'How am I supposed to know that?! This is outrageous. I-'

'Of course you knew. I showed this photo to the watchman, who recognised the person I was asking about.'

'Per?'

'No, you. You were there this summer asking if you could search the containers for your son.'

Holmen stared at Harry, who went on:

'You had it all planned. Wire cutters to get in and an empty container, which was an appropriate place for a drug addict to end his life, where no one could hear or see you shoot him. With the gun you knew Per's mother could testify was his.'

Halvorsen studied Birger Holmen and held himself in readiness, but Holmen showed no signs of making any kind of move. He breathed heavily through his nose and scratched his forearm while staring into space.

'You can't prove any of this.' He said this in a resigned tone, as if it were a fact he regretted.

Harry made a conciliatory gesture. In the ensuing silence they could hear loud barking from down in the street.

'It won't stop itching, will it,' Harry said.

Holmen stopped scratching at once.

'Can we see what itches so much?'

'It's nothing.'

'We can do it here or down at the station. Your choice, herr Holmen.'

The barking increased in intensity. A dog sled, here, in the middle of the city? Halvorsen had a feeling there was going to be an explosion.

'Fine,' Holmen whispered, unbuttoning the cuff and pushing up his sleeve.

There were two small sores with scabs on. The skin around them was red and inflamed.

'Turn your arm round,' Harry ordered.

Holmen had a matching sore underneath.

'They itch like hell, dog bites, don't they,' Harry said. 'Especially after ten to fourteen days when they begin to heal. A doctor down at A amp;E told me that I had to try and stop scratching. You should have done that too, herr Holmen.'

Holmen gazed at his sores without seeing them. 'Should I?'

'The skin is punctured in three places. We can prove that a particular dog down at the container terminal bit you – we have a model of its jaw. Hope you managed to defend yourself.'

Holmen shook his head. 'I didn't want… I just wanted her to feel free.'

The barking in the street came to a sudden end.

'Are you going to confess?' Harry asked, signalling to Halvorsen, who thrust a hand into his inside pocket. Without finding pen or paper. Harry rolled his eyes and gave him his own notepad.

'He said he was so low,' Holmen said, 'that he couldn't go on. That now he really wanted to give up. So I searched around and found him a room in the Salvation Army Hostel. A bed and three meals a day for twelve hundred kroner a month. And he was promised a place on the methadone project. There was just a couple of months to wait. But then I heard nothing from him, and when I rang the Hostel, they said he had absconded without paying the rent, and… well, then he turned up here again. With the gun.'

'And you decided there and then?'

'He was a goner. I had already lost my son. And I couldn't let him take her with him.'

'How did you find him?'

'Not in Plata. He was down in Eika and I said I would buy the gun off him. He was carrying it and showed it to me. Wanted the money on the spot. But I said I didn't have enough money. He should meet me at the gate at the back of the container terminal the next evening. You know, in fact I'm glad you have… I…'

'How much?' Harry interrupted.

'What?'

'How much did you have to pay?'

'Fifteen thousand kroner.'

'And…'

'He came. It turned out he didn't have any ammunition for the weapon. Never did have, he said.'

'But you must have had an inkling that would be the case, and it's a standard calibre, so you bought some?'